


In Glimpses I Would See...

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-27
Updated: 2010-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:29:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which iTunes shows the world who is really pulling the puppet strings and uses Faberry (and company) as props.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Glimpses I Would See...

**We Used To Be Friends / Dandy Warhols**   
_A long time ago, we used to be friends, but I haven't thought of you lately at all_   
**PRE-SHOW**

They used to be friends.

Not best friends, but they would share crayons, or pencils, or erasable pens as the years dragged on, and when Quinn forgets her hot lunch money, Rachel always lets her borrow the change, because she has extra, just in case.

Society pulls them apart.

Quinn is classically elegant: blond hair, hazel eyes and a gold cross hanging around her delicate neck.

Rachel is slightly less conventional: dark hair and dark eyes and a nose that, at the age of thirteen, she hasn’t grown into yet.

Society dictates certain rules and one of those rules – the unspoken kind, which are more enforced than the spoken rules – say that girls like Quinn follow a certain path and girls like Rachel will follow their own.

They used to be friends –  _merely acquaintances,_ Quinn will later say with a hard glint her eye – but the looming threat of high school pulls them in separate directions and leaves Rachel alone at her lunch table and Quinn sitting next to Santana Lopez, laughing at jokes that are never funny.

They used to be friends, but society pulls them apart and neither of them is strong enough to try and bridge the gap.

**Angeles / Elliott Smith**   
_I could make you satisfied in everything you do, all your "secret wishes" could right now be coming true, and be forever with my poison arms around you, no one's going to fool around with us_   
**AU**

Quinn gets her first taste of high school the first week of ninth grade.

It tastes like sour apple and Sprite.

When she wakes up the next morning, her mouth feels like cotton and her head is pounding and she swears this is never going to happen again.

It does, though, and when Noah Puckerman’s hands start to paw at her waistline and he’s smirking and leering, she looks over his shoulder and Rachel – her  _secret_  – is standing there, staring at her. Even with the distance and the way her head feels like it’s spinning around and around, Quinn can see the disappointment in Rachel’s eyes.

“What?” Puck groans when she stops pushing her body into his hands. He looks back over his shoulder and groans again. “Oh,  _come on_. She won’t tell anyone.”

He’s right, she won’t; she can’t, because then Rachel would have to explain why it bothers her and Rachel made these rules up to begin with, so Quinn doesn’t really understand why it would bother her in the first place.

And then world kind of stops in one of those moments people have only a few times in their lives and Rachel is putting down her drink and crossing the room in long heavy strides and effortlessly tugging Quinn out of Puck’s slack hold into her own arms. Quinn’s body reacts naturally, her arms looping around Rachel’s neck.

“Rach-”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Rachel whispers, kissing her until she stops talking.

It’s not what she wanted to hear, but Rachel is kissing her and Puck is gone, so it’s enough for now.

**Stuck At Sea / Honorary Title  
** _So many words, so many words, so many stuck at sea_   
**AU**

She’s done far more stupid things than this, maybe.

She was head cheerleader once, and then she wasn’t. She was pregnant once, and then she wasn’t. She had the perfect life, and then she didn’t.

Now she has Rachel and sneaking out of her room in the middle of the night and sex that hurts the empty space where her heart should be.

Now she has Rachel and bruises on her back from where Rachel pushes her against the side of the house, making up for what she lacks with what she can do; she has Rachel and teeth marks on her collarbone where Rachel bites down to make her do something more than just stand there, a seemingly unwilling participant.

In school – in Glee, the hallways, the bathroom, and Spanish class – Rachel won’t look at her; won’t acknowledge that Quinn even exists, and she’s okay with that because she spent the better part of two years doing the same thing, and karma’s a bitch, right? She’s okay with it because Rachel is always there at night; always willing to overlook that Quinn won’t kiss her; always around to put Quinn back together when she falls apart.

She has Rachel until one night she doesn’t.

One night, she shows and Rachel doesn’t and Quinn is left with bruises and teeth marks and memories of nimble fingers and whispered words Quinn could never return.

She sees Rachel in school, and she tries to stay something, but the words stick in her throat.

Rachel doesn’t look like she wants to hear them anyway.

**Find Your Place / Settings**   
_The years I've spent in wanting this, I've yet to turn around. And I'll be damned if you're the one, who tries to slow me down_   
**PRE-SHOW**

On the first day of school, she strides down the halls of William McKinley High, uniform starched and pressed, Santana on her left and another girl – _Brittany_ , Ms. Sylvester told her earlier in the week – on her right.

Rachel Berry is standing at her locker, spinning the dial a couple times to the left, a few more to the right, and instead of going over to help her – the way that Rachel did when they first got lockers in fifth grade and Quinn couldn’t figure out the right-left-right technique – Quinn tosses her ponytail over her shoulder and laughs.

Santana laughs a moment later, following Quinn’s lead.

Brittany frowns and as they continue down the hall, Quinn hears the other blond whisper, “ _But I don’t know how to do that either_.”

Quinn pretends that she doesn’t see Santana’s hand brush against the back Brittany’s, and for a moment, when Santana says, “ _It’s okay. She wasn’t laughing at you_ ,” she wonders if that’s Santana’s humanity rearing its unfortunate head.

She wonders if  _that’s_  going to be a problem.

Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t be, but just to counteract it, she makes sure to introduce Santana to Noah Puckerman.

**Avalanche / Ryan Adams**   
_I found your photograph in a cardboard box in a magazine. I can't remember you, remember us or anything.  
_ **FUTURE-FIC**

On moving day, Quinn finds a box in the back of the garage. It’s practically torn apart by weather and termites and the bottom almost drops out when she tries to lift it, so she drags it out from the cool darkness of the garage to the sun-warmed cement of the driveway. No one isn’t paying much attention to her; there’s people to direct around and things to get packed up and Santana is in the kitchen with Elizabeth, making macaroni and cheese for everyone, so she figures that it’s okay to go through the box. She probably would have left it if she hadn’t seen it, and she doesn’t even remember what was in it to begin with.

There’s bunched up newspaper she has to dig through, like the time she got that doll for Elizabeth’s birthday and she had to find it burrowed under packing peanuts, but her hand hits the corner of something cold and sharp and her fingers wrap around it, pulling out a picture.

She looks sixteen, or seventeen, really, because there’s no baby bump and she’s not wearing her Cheerios uniform. She mostly can tell how old she is because in the very corner of the picture – after she wipes away some dust and grime and she tilts it towards the sun and squints – the pixilated, seventeen version of herself has her hand clasped tightly around a hand that belong to an arm that belongs to Rachel Berry.

It feels like someone reaches in and squeezes her insides.  _Rachel Berry_ , she muses.  _I don’t even know where she is_.

Rachel Berry took off after graduation with Quinn’s heart in her pocket calendar, citing irreconcilable differences while Quinn screamed – making “ _a damn fool of yourself”_  Santana later told her when Quinn got past her denial stage of the grieving process – about Rachel shutting herself off to anything remotely close to a feeling.

She’s so caught up in her thoughts that when Elizabeth thrusts a bowl of orange noodles at her, she almost drops the picture. She smiles at her daughter and takes the bowl in one hand and the little girl in the other.

“C’mere, Moneky,” she coos, settling the five-year-old in her lap.

Elizabeth picks up the picture as Quinn makes a big show of digging into the macaroni and cheese – which she detests, in actuality. “Who’s this?”

Quinn happily points out everyone: Auntie Santana and Auntie B and Daddy and Uncle Finn.

“Who’s this?” Elizabeth asks again, pointing at Rachel’s face.

Rachel wasn’t easy to forget the first time, but Quinn has more in life now – friends and family and her daughter to look after – so she shrugs her shoulders, shovels another forkful of processed  _orange_  cheese into her mouth and sloppily kisses her daughter on the forehead.

“I don’t remember her,” she whispers against pale golden hair.

**Wonder If She Knows / Minor Majority**   
_I wonder if she knows that she takes all my time; wonder if she thinks that I'm pretty. I wonder sometimes, did I do alright?_   
**POST-SECTIONALS**

Glee starts being hard after Sectionals, and not just because of the baby. It’s because there’s suddenly no man-child to hide behind, like Finn or Puck, and she’s a single entity now; her own person.

It freaks her out.

It mostly freaks her out because between all the free time she has and the fact that she’s living with Brittany – which, unfortunately, means living with Santana – she starts to see Rachel Berry in a different kind of light.

A  _nice_  light: like sparkles and sunshine and spotlights.

Glee starts being hard because she spends most of her time staring at Rachel instead of working on her footwork; spends most of her time imagining how loud Rachel can be in bed instead of learning the words to the song.

Glee starts being hard because she’s obsessed with Rachel Berry and – just like the girl herself – it consumes everything she does from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to sleep and all the time in between. If she were the type of girl who still dreamed, they would probably be extravagant, Alice In Wonderland-style dreams with Barbra Streisand singing in the background.

She starts to become anxious, all the time.

_Did Rachel notice that I wore my hair differently today?_

_What if Rachel doesn’t like this shirt?_

_How would Rachel make this work?_

Rachel Berry starts to become, simultaneously, the high and low of her days. If Rachel doesn’t smile at her during Spanish, Quinn thinks that she did something wrong; if Rachel  _does_  smile at her, she’s on clouds until a well-placed barb by Finn 2.0 – which what everyone is calling him since the baby debacle – brings her back down again.

It’s like a disease – Rachel Berry becomes the thing she wants; needs, even – and for the first time in her life, she wants to catch whatever sickness it is.

The only problem is: she’s sure Rachel doesn’t even know.

**Daydream Believer / Mary Beth Maziarz**   
_Oh, and our good times start and end without dollar one to spend. but how much, baby, do we really need._   
**FUTURE-FIC**

It’s New York: bright lights and big city and little people working their way up through the ranks of their dreams, one audition and staff meeting at a time.

It’s New York and they’re living paycheck-to-paycheck but Rachel never stops smiling and Quinn can’t help but smile along with her because if Rachel’s happy, Quinn’s happy.

At least, that’s what she tells herself every morning in the mirror after her army-style timed shower.

 _Rachel is worth it all,_ she tells her reflection, ignoring that the chip in the mirror doesn’t let her see her own mouth.  _Rachel is worth every bowl of Ramen and every bottle of generic shampoo and every extremely quick long-distance phone call to Brittany in San Francisco_.

This dream that they insisted they make or break by themselves, is worth it if Rachel is still smiling at the end of her double shifts at the Greasy Spoon on the corner of their block; it’s worth it if Rachel spends Sunday mornings wrapped in nothing but a sheet, circling auditions in the paper in red pen; it’s worth it if she makes it as writer in this town, but only if Rachel makes it too.

She almost laughs when she thinks about it: Quinn Fabray, head-cheerleader-turned-pregnant-teenager, and Rachel Berry, gold star dreamer, making it day by day in a fourth floor walkup where every journey up and down the stairs and the streets is adventure – sometimes the good kind, sometimes not. If someone had told her, when she started high school, that this is where she would be, stuck between an internship and night classes at the community college a couple blocks over, sharing a bed, a  _life_ , with Rachel Berry, she would have had Santana punch them somewhere they could feel it.

Except she is and as long as Rachel keeps smiling and keeps her up late at night, whispering how they’re going to make it big soon, it’s not a bad way to live.

Ramen noodles and three minutes showers aren’t the best, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made.

Quinn will make them for Rachel.


End file.
